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RHAPSODY 



BY 



ALFRED HITCH 




RHAPSODY 



BY 



ALFRED HITCH 



New York 

New York Book Supply Co. 

27 East gisT Street 






LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Cooies Received 

MAR 201906 

Copyright Entry , 
CUSS^O. XXc. No. 

) 2> ^ ? 6^ 

COPY B. 



Copyright, iqo6, 

By 
Alfred Hitch. 



CONTENTS 



Miscellaneous 



An Invocation to Maternity 


PAGE 
. 14 


A Toast . . . . . 


16 


"a Life of Sorrow in a World of Wronj^^" 


. 17 


A Walk in the Mi^^ht . 


22 


An Epitaph .... 


. 25 


"As a Thrush that Sin^s in the Hedge" 


26 


All for Love .... 


. 29 


A Field of Grain 


38 


Air Castles .... 


. 40 


A Song of the Desert 


42 


A Song of the West 


. 50 


Evolution .... 


44 


Her .... . 


. 27 


"Hold Me Fast, Love, Hold Me Fast" 


30 


"I Come to Thee, O My Darling" 


. 28 


Imitation .... 


45 


Joseph W. Folk . . 


. 32 


Literature .... 


22 


Life ..... 


. 39 


"My Life is Spent in a Fever" 


18 


"My Soul No Longer Brood and Languish' 


. 19 


Miss Moderna 


49 


November .... 


. 10 



IV 



CONTENTS 



Non-fulfillment 

"Oh! My Heart is Filled with Sorrow- 
On the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam 
On Leaving the City in the Sprino' 
Prometheus Vinctus . 
? . 

Rock-a-By Baby 
Sorrow is Dumb . 
Sects .... 
Smithfield 

Sold .... 
The Tyrants of the Earth 
The Ansv/er 
The Number Two 
The Two Sides 
"'Tis Said that in Death Man will \\' 

Life" . . . . 

To Helen Keller . 

To William Watson . ... 

Tired .... 

To a Child, Crying 
To a Maiden at Prayer 
The Dead Boss 

The Philosophy of j. Edward Addicks 
The Plea of the Filipino 
To the Czar 
The Business Man 
To Libertv 



into 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

The Indian ..... 42 

The Heritaij^e of Blood . . . -43 

Toleration . . . • -44 

The Golden Aj^e . . . . -45 

The Drunkard . . . .46 

The Miser . . . . .46 

The Sonnet . . . • .48 

"Upon the Earth that Holds Thee Now" . 28 

Wasted Time . . . • • 43 

Will . . . . . -54 

"When Misfortune Overtakes Js" . .24 

In The Rocky Mountains . . -51 

Denver . . . • -57 

On the Mountain . . • -54 

Sprinj4' in the Mountains . . .56 

The Prospector . . . • -53 

The Columbine . . • -53 

"Thou Sovereiii^n Peak of the Mountains" . 58 

Written in a Deserted Miniui;- Camp . 55 

Concentrates . . • • -59 

Race Suicide ..... 64 

The Supernatural . . . .63 

Walt Whitman .... 63 

The Awakemnc . . . • -65 

Advance Sheets from an United States His- 
torical Work, A. D. 2900 . . 70 



Here you will find no finished picture, 
Nor yet a rounded thought will meet; 

For like my life, the best is wanting. 
And all is vague and incomplete. 



A little book of verses, 

Without restraint or rule, — 

Too small for criticism, 
Too ^^ood for ridicule. 

It will not be a failure, 

Thouj^'h it does not succeed 

We cannot fail beyond the 
Endeavor of the deed. 



PART I. 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

|iii|iii|iii|iii|liii|iii|iii|iii| 

THE TYRANTS OF THE EARTH. 

Destruction waits upon our steps 

In all our wa^'s and roads, 
'Mongweak inhabitants of earth 

That dwell in frail abodes. 

We beat or kill, for food or fun, 

All other life on earth: 
If to be brutal makes the brute, 

Why claim a higher birth? 

Flesh is flesh and blood is blood, 

What'er the lineament: 
Though life and life may differ, yet 

They are not different. 

We kill our brother in the brute — 

We kill our brother, then 
Sit down to eat his flesh, and ask 

The grace of God. Amen. 



lo RHAPSODY 



NOVEMBER. 

November comes with sullen mood, 
And takes from life its green defense; 

And now begins, in field and wood, 
The slaughter of the innocents. 

Man feels the savage in him stir, 
An instinct deeper than his race 

Impels him forth to run with hounds, 
And follow in the cruel chase. 

Man, ere he had to manhood grown, 
A beast in forests long ago, 

Took other life to save his own, 
And lived upon the hunt; but now, 

No longer hunts for food or place. 
Yet with his dog he follows still 

The fierce excitement of the chase. 
The bloody pleasure of the kill. 



THE ANSWER. 

I sat and read in books all day 
The hist'ry of many a bloody fray 



RHAPSODY II 

And as I read, age followed age 
In quick succession down the page, 
And merged at length into the whole. 

Then tired, I sought the window seat 

That overlooks a city street, 

And watched the hurrying crowd go by, 

And mused the while, until my soul 

Seemed dead within me, and I cried, 

"What is this life force? what am I?" 

The soul within m}^ soul replied: 

"The restless spirit of the earth 

That groans and travails unto birth; 

Deep in elemental night, 

A blind god yearning toward the light." 



THE NUMBER TWO. 

Life is a balance 'twixt this and that. 
And hangs itself in balance with death; 

Life is a see-saw, the world is too. 

The poise is a moment, it moves at a breath. 

The Number Two is the riddle of the Sphinx, 

That man always is finding and never has found: 

In the magnet is hidden the secret of sex. 

And the meaning of motion, power and sound. 



12 RHAPSODY 



THE TWO SIDES. 

'Tis well, I know, and right, indeed, 
To side with partj^ and to lean. 

To fight for nation, hold to creed, — 
And yet how little and how mean! 

Alas! he wrongs himself who fights 
In any cause less than the whole; 

For though the cause seem just and right. 
He thereby loses half his soul. 



"TIS SAID THAT IN DEATH MAN 
WILL WAKE INTO LIFE." 

'Tis said that in death man will wake into life, 
In a beautiful countrj^ forever will dwell; 

But I fear that vile man its rich beauty will mar. 
For earth was a heaven till man made it hell. 



TO HELEN KELLER. 

Closed to the day, thine eyes behold the night 

And stars beyond our ken. No earthly sound doth mar 



RHAPSODY 13 

Thy life-long dream that fills thee with delight, 
And glows upon thy face. And we are far 
From thee, but thou art near, for undeterred, 
Thou'st learned our books who first had to learn how; 
And better hast thou learned than we, for thou 
Hast felt where we have only seen or heard. 

Dream on, dream on, deep in the tranquil shade. 
Beyond the gaudy day, where life doth run 
To folly, fret and fact. Defect hath made 
Thee perfect, and thy stars outshine the sun. 



TO WILLIAM WATSON. 

Thou spoken thought of my dumb soul- 
Artist in every line — 

The world is waiting for its poet. 
But Watson, thou art mine. 

I turn from the voluminous past. 
Big with unwinnowed words. 

From the dead cry of yesterda}'. 
Furled flags and broken swords, — 

Turn to the present and to thee, 

To art artistic grown. 
To modern thought and modern pain. 

And find mvself at home. 



14 RHAPSODY 



AN INVOCATION TO MATERNITY. 

O Father, Mother, guard it well, the life ye gave: 
Ye are as gods to kill or make alive; 



Within 3'our hands the helpless future lies — 
O guide and save! 

O Father, Mother, is it well, the life ye gave; 
Maimed and wTonged, a shame and a reproach? 
Have the unborn no rights? 

Shall mind ne'er enter in the making of the mind, 
But only blind and senseless lust? 

O Father, Mother, of the child. 

Be father, mother, to the youth: 

Youth is the danger stage of life; 

The errors of the youth will chase him to the grave: 

A deed once done can never be recalled. 

Nor one false step be rectified. 

O Father, Mother, guard it well, the life ye gave: 
Ye are as gods to kill or make alive; 
Within your hands the helpless future lies — 
O guide and save! 



RHAPSODY 15 



ROCK-A-BY BABY. 

Infant asleep in the cradle, 

I sit and wonder what thou art sleeping to — 

Plain man or god, leader or led. 

One in a million or the million, — 

Whether a self-important man of affairs, 

Clear-headed, cool and capable, 

Or else a shrinking, cringing vagabond, 

And through long dreary years hang lank 

Along the crowded ways of life. 

Perhaps thou wilt live a drunkard, masturbater or 

opium-eater, 
Fast bound by the chains of habit 
In a burning hell of remorse. 

O where or what is thy fatal defect, 

Thy tendon of Achilles? 

Is it a hereditary taint in the blood. 

To break forth into virulent corruption, 

And make life loathsome? 

Or else, and worse. 

Some insignificant blotch upon the brain. 

To slowly spread, grow with the growing man. 

Till the whole mind is blurred and dulled and dead. 



i6 RHAPSODY 

Whether thou art born to this or that, I know not, 
But one thing I know — 

That as thou wast born of thy parents' ^-^earning, 
Yea, of the^^earning of ten thousand-thousand parents, 
Yea, of ten thousand-thousand centuries. 
Yea, of eternity, — 

So thou shalt live and die, still yearning, vainly strug- 
gling, 
Grasping the impalpable air in thy empty palms. 



SORROW IS DUMB. 

I strove m}' sorrow to express, 
To sound the depths of deep distress. 
To put my grief in wailing rhyme, 
And build from woe a work sublime; 
But strove in vain — my words were weak; 
Sorrow is dumb— it cannot speak. 

And though I searched the treasured hoards 
Of sighing songs and weeping words. 
My heart pronounced them poor and weak; 
Sorrow is dumb — it cannot speak. 



A TOAST. 



Fill the cup with poison hemlock, 
And drink with me to Woe; 



RHAPSODY 17 

For all else is but illusion, 
And soon will fade and go. 

Oh! this world is but a desert, 

A very dreary land; 
And our hope is but a fleeting 

Mirage upon the sand. 

See we luscious figs and olives, 

And every fruit that's fair; 
Ah! but when we go to pluck them 

They vanish into air. 

Happiness will flee to-morrow, 

And Sorrow come again: 
Come, and drink with me to Sorrow, 

And all her ghastlv train. 



''A LIFE OF SORROW IN A WORLD 
OF WRONG." 

A life of sorrow in a world of wrong, 
Though lasting but a day, doth last too long — 
Too long to weep, to struggle and fall; 
For life is nothing rf living is all. 

Star of my Life! descend to the West; 

1 am weary of action, and long to rest — 



I RHAPSODY 

To sleep forever, forever to sleep, 

In a tomb of the earth, or the caves of the deep. 



'OH! MY HEART IS FILLED WITH 
SORROW." 

Oh! my heart is filled with sorrow 
That no human soul can share, 

And to-day doth link to-morrow 
In an endless chain of care. 

How I long for home and freedom, 
Love that never can be mine! 

I have lived the life of others. 

And my soul doth droop and pine. 



MY LIFE IS SPENT IN A FEVER" 

My life is spent in a fever, 

A struggle for power and wealth, 

With a heart on fire with its passion. 
And a mind at war with itself. 

I would I could live without the 
Vain things of the world's unrest, 

And break the bonds of convention. 
For the peace and ease of the breast — 



RHAPSODY 19 

Never again to be troubled 

With a wish beyond my lot — 
x\ life as careless as Nature, 

A home in a sylvan grot. 

But I know that my spirit will never, 

O never will be at rest! 
Till the long green grass and daisies 

Are growing out of my breast. 



MY SOUL NO LONGER BROOD AND 
LANGUISH." 

My soul, no longer brood and languish 

Within the prison of the mind; 
But go abroad and live with Nature, 

And lose thyself in all mankind. 

My heart, no more with vain repining 

Profane the sacredness of grief, 
When all the world is filled with sorrow. 

And seeks, but cannot find relief. 

But there is no degree in sorrow," 
My heart made answer, "and of all 
The many millions that have suffered, 
None ever thought his sorrow small. 



20 RHAPSODY 

"And I am tired of life divided, — 
To live, and only know of pain, 

The loneliness of crowded cities, 
The weariness of hill and plain; 

"For as the dove the earth encircled, 
When water covered all its face, 

So through the weary world I wander, 
Nor find I any resting place." 



TIRED. 

To another daj^ of consuming toil, 

I arise, unrested and worn. 
To work 'neath the glare of the August sun. 

In the fields of the ripening corn. 

The sun goes up; the earth catches fire; 

I stew in my sweat, and bake; 
While the soul is numbed, and the mind is dulled, 

And the tired limbs ache and ache. 

The sickening smell of the rank, green corn 

Adds nausea unto my pain, 
As I wearih^ stoop from hill to hill, 

While the hot world reels in my brain. 

O life of interminable toilsome days, 
And tired nights that last but an hour! 



RHAPSODY ^i 

Let the strong and the wealthy join in i\\y praise — 
I have neither the will nor the power. 



TO A CHILD, CRYING. 

Never fret about the morrow; 

Take thy pleasure in to-day; 
Why shouldst from December borrow 

Frost to chill the buds of May? 

Life is sweet in the beginning, 
Clouded by no troubled past; 

Yes, the spring of life is pleasant, 
But it cannot always last. 

Oh! enjoy youth while 'tis fleeting, 
In thy glad, paternal home; 

There is plenty time for weeping 
In the years that are to come. 



NON-FULFILLMENT. 

The beautiful past that my childhood lived in 
Is dead and deep buried in sorrow and sin. 

O happy is he can complete, and can scan. 

The dreams of the child in the deeds of the man! 



25 RHAPSODY 



A WALK IN THE NIGHT. 

Come, O Love, and we'll walk abroad to-night. 
And see the still world by the pale moonlight: 
The rabble may walk when the sun is bright. 
But we, my darling, will walk in the night. 

We'll walk where the bat goes fluttering through 
The fields that are damp with tlie falling dew, 
And the stars look down, and shudder with fright, 
At the shapes and sounds that live in the night. 

Together we'll walk in the midnight gloom, 
In the churchyard under the dying moon; 
We'll walk up and down by the lone church tower; 
We'll walk with the spirits in the midnight hour. 

Come, O Love, and we'll walk down into the night, 
And view the dead world by the dim starlight: 
The rabble may walk in the broad daylight. 
But we, my darling, will walk in the night. 



LITERATURE. 

I find myself, a^id joy to know it, 
In the philosopher and poet. 



RHAPSODY 25 

I prize a jewel of the heart, 

Dit^ged forth by genius, shaped by art, 

A novel phrase, a sentence brief, 

That standeth out in bold relief,^ — 

Wherein the master minds have wrought 

The prodigality of thought. 

In the economy of words. 

I like to find a pearl below 
The verses smooth and liquid flow, 
Or else a subtle thought pursue 
Its many devious windings through. 

I love to dream in dim retreat 

With sad Rossetti, morbid-sweet 

His dreams, like brilliant plumaged birds 

Caught in a silken mesh of words; 

Or swing down Swinburne's swinging verse 

Past lovers pale with passions fierce. 

Whose blessings turn into a curse; 

Or from myself to step aside 

To Shakespeare's world so wonderous wide. 

And live a life intensified, — 

To fight with warriors, reign with kings, 

To love with lovers, be all things, — 

To feel with Hamlet's sickly mood. 

Or dream in Arden's fairv wood. 



24 RHAPSODY 

My days are spent and wasted quite, 

From night to morn, from morn till night, 

With men that never read nor write. 

When sad and lonely, worn with strife, 

And weary of a weary life, 

Of foolish words and angry looks, 

I turn for solace to my books: 

Books are my friends, my child, my wife, 

Mv love, mv God, mv all in life. 



TO A MAIDEN AT PRAYER. 

Pray on little maid who art lovely and fair, 

And pure as the day of thy birth; 
There is need of thy praying, if prayer can make less 

The sorrow and sin of the earth. 

I would gladly resign all the pleasures of life 
For the prayers of thy sanctified breath. 

And give the whole world for thy hope and thy faith 
To sweeten the bitter of death. 



"WHEN MISFORTUNE 
OVERTAKES US" 

When misfortune overtakes us, 

When consumed with grief or shame, 



RHAPSODY 25 

There is comfort in the thought that 

Through another's fault it came; 
But the sting to all our woes is 

When we have ourselves to blame. 



AN EPITAPH. 

The day was long, his way was steep, 
He being weary fell asleep; 
i\nd here beneath this quiet grass 
He sleeps while ages onward pass — 
He sleeps, he sleeps, he sleeps at last! 

Upon his couch there falls no light; 
There is no day — 'tis always night; 
No noise to break upon his ear; 
No dreams disturb his slumber here — 
He sleeps, he sleeps, he sleeps at last! 



We read what men have 'complished 

In all their labors joint. 
And at the end we find an 

Interrogation point. 



26 RHAPSODY 



"AS A THRUSH THAT SINGS 
IN THE HEDGE." 

As a thrush that sings in the hedge, 

And dies ere its song is sung; 
As a flower that blooms in the morn, 

And fades ere the day is done; — 
So the maid with beautiful face 

Soon turns to a wrinkled dame; 
So the voice of gladness and mirth 

Soon ends in a cry of pain. 



ON THE RUBAIYAT OF OMAR 
KHAYYAM. 

These rhymes are gray with age and wet with tears; 
And yet we feel, in all their hopes and fears. 

That we are one with him who lived and died 
Far in the dead and long forgotten years. 

Long time he sought some certain truth to gain. 
And finding not, he murmured, "All is vain: 

Live while we live is wisdom, for once dead, 
Who knows that we shall ever live again? 



RHAPSODY 27 

"Denial and duty well become the priest, 
But we will pluck the rose, sit at the feast. 

And sweeten all our woes with love and wine; 
Then Death may do its worst — we've lived at least." 

This verse has outlived creeds, and still is new; 
Though men have sought out many an interview 

With Nature through the centuries, to-day 
We know no more than Omar Khayyam knew. 

Come, fill the cup, O Love, O Sweetheart mine! 
With sweet and purple nectar of the vine, 
And we will drink to Omar's memory — 
Old Omar, oracle of love and wine. 



HER. 

I would not court the lily. 
Nor with the angels roam: 

Let flowers wed with flowers. 
And heaven keep her own. 

I love a maiden mortal. 
Eve's latest daughter, 

With all her mother's sin; 
I love her faults and follies. 
Her pimples and her freckles, 

The mole upon her chin. 



28 RHAPSODY 

More than all else I love her — 

The end of my desires; 
I love her for a woman, 
With tingling nerves of passion 
Bequeathed me by my sires. 



'I COME TO THEE, O MY DARLING! 

I come to thee, O my darling! 

Faint with the longing of j'ears. 
Weak with unsatiate passion. 

And burnt wdth its scalding tears. 

I have come from the Town of Ambition, 
Through the Wood of the Heart-Sick Dove, 

To dream in the Temple of Beauty, 
And feed on the lilies of love. 



UPON THE EARTH THAT HOLDS 
THEE NOW." 

Upon the earth that holds thee now, 

Or in the heavens above, 
There's naught so beautiful as thou. 

And naught so sweet as love. 



RHAPSODY 29 



ALL FOR LOVE. 

We love with all the yearning 
Our fruitless years have seen; 

x\nd we'll not blush to own it, 
Though one doth stand between. 

Though Love forswear the altar 
To please the heart within, 

We know that Love is holy. 
For Nature cannot sin. 

Fear shall not make us timid, 
Nor Shame sit at our feast: 

We know that love is love still. 
Though love without a priest. 

Our lives are twined together 
As strong and fast as fate; 

For love is more than marriage — 
It binds, and naught can break. 

We'll love through joy and sorrow 
(True love is never done). 

And kiss and cling together 
Till love shall make us one. 



30 RHAPSODY 



''HOLD ME FAST, LOVE, HOLD ME 
FAST!" 

The world grows chill and overcast: 
Hold me fast, Love, hold me fast! 
Sa}' not farewell, but hold me fast, 
Lest Death be lord of Love at last: 
Hold me fast. Love, hold me fast! 

The ground is frozen hard and white — 
Hold me tight. Love, hold me tight! — 

The wind is howling through the night; 

Thou art fading from m}- sight: 

Hold me tight. Love, hold me tight! 

I know that in the cofhn chest — 

Hold me, press me to thy breast! — 
I can never, never rest 
Except thou fold me to th}^ breast: 
Clasp me, fold me to thy breast! 

'Tis meet that lovers, you and I — 

Hold me tight, Love, hold me tight! — 

Together live, together die, 

And side b}- side forever lie: 

Hold me tight. Love, hold me tight! 



RHAPSODY . 31 



SECTS. 

They have bound and imprisoned universal God, 

And left the world in the lurch; 
They have squeezed the Bible into a creed, 

And locked it up in a church. 

Their church is sort of a social club. 

For rhetoric and music made, 
Where men and women on Sundays may meet 

In a sanctified dress parade. 



SMITHFIELD. 

In the name of him who died 

Upon Mount Calvary, 
The Christian shed his brother's blood, 

And throttled Liberty. 

The man that suffered on the rack 
And he that bound him down, — 

Each followed duty and the right — 
How shall God know his own? 

The fires of Smithfield burn no more; 
The Devil is not well, 



32 RHAPSODY 

And soon his heart will melt in tears 
And quench the fires of Hell. 



JOSEPH W. FOLK. 

The country's robbed: we honest men 

Pass by and make no sign, 
And by our silence we become 

Accessories to the crime. 

But now there comes an honest man 

That fights dishonest}^, 
A man that loves his country more 

Than his securit}'. 

He comes to usher in that time 

(Alas! he cometh late) 
When honest men no more neglect 

Their duty to the state. 

The Church doth hold for future use 

The present and the real; 
And while the Christian kneels in prayer 

The thieves break through and steal. 

Let's live to-day, and for to-day. 

Live for our country and our homes; 

And if to-morrow comes, why then, 
We'll live to-morrow when it comes. 



RHAPSODY 33 



THE DEAD BOSS. 

(M. S. Quay: obiit 1904-) 

The boss is dead! 
Office seekers, 
Henchmen and heelers, 
Bow the head. 
And mourn 3'our loss; 
For the boss is dead, 
The ^reat, j^^reat boss. 

He was a .s^reat man in a small way — 

He robbed the people, and won their applause, 

And ruled a whole state as his own. 

He was a g-reat man in a small way — 

His heart ne'er thrilled to a noble cause. 

And he lived for power alone. 

Henchmen and heelers! pass on before 

The gilded casket, where the dead boss lies. 

He worked for you, but his work is o'er: 

Then mourn and weep, — 

Weep, weep, weep, — 

And bury him deep, — 

Deep, deep, deep — 

So deep that his spirit shall never arise 

To trouble the world anv more. 



34. RHAPSODY 

SOLD. 

Though its badge was an eagle, the party must own it 

Was the dollar that won, not the eagle upon it. 

Old Addicks bought it, you know^ very well. 

So who shall question his right to sell, 

Or do as he please with the thing he bought? 

The sovereign people, the young and the gra^'. 

All marched to the poles on election day. 

And voted their liberty clean away. 

For a rake-off advanced, they sold him the right 

To stab in the back and plunder at night. 

They were bought and sold like hogs on the drive, 
A white man for ten and a nigger for five; 
Wheedled and driven and cheated and sold: 
He bought them with silver to sell them for gold. 
In selling themselves they surely were sold, — 
Sold, sold, sold! 

Del., Nov., IQ02. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF J. EDWARD 
ADDICKS. 

The people cry against me — 
1 am the man successful. 



RHAPSODY 35 

They are the ones that fail: 
I took ten million dollars 
Out of the people's pockets, 

And never went to jail. 

My friends are bought and paid for, — 
The friends of my good money 

Unto the money's end. 
If you want friends, go buy them, 
But always buy on credit. 
And never strike a balance. 

If you would keep a friend. 

The people call me rascal: 
Now who's the biggest rascal. 

The people, sir, or I? 
I've bought their votes by thousands. 
But if they would not sell them, 

I surely could not buy 

Who buys their suffrage is, sir, 
As much as he that does not, 

The creature of their grace; 
The people are their rulers; 
They make their kings and tyrants. 

And hold them in their place. 

I claim that life is like to 
A game of whist or poker, 



36 RHAPSODY 

And I have won the game; 
I've won by tricks and bluffing; 
The people cxy from env}^ — 

They all would do the same. 



THE PLEA OF THE FILIPINO. 

By that liberty ye treasure, 

We th}^ mercy do entreat: 
Though we be but "beast" or "savage," 

Liberty is not less sweet. 

Truth has written, blood has sealed it, 

"Liberty is for the brave:" 
Think 3'e that we fought the Spaniard 

To become the Yankee's slave? 

Ye have tak'n your strength for justice. 
And our weakness for a fault, 

So our pleading will not save us — 
Only strength can make thee halt. 

Ye are tyrants when abroad 

Who are patriots at home; 
But the, ages shall avenge us — 

Caesar's on the march to Rome. 



RHAPSODY 37 

In the marble halls of Empire 

Beasts of terror lie in wait; 
If you share the Roman's grandeur, 

Ye must share the Roman's fate. 



TO THE CZAR. 

Thou wast Czar of the people 
When people were children, 

But chilhood is past; 
By bounds, and with leaping. 
The people are growing 

To manhood at last. 

Stand down, O tyrant! 
Make room for the people! 

They have come to their own- 
They have come through ages 
Of dearth and oppression. 

With many a groan. 

Bow down to the people. 
And give, ere the}^ take it, 

Thy forfeited rule! 
Why stubbornly and blindly 
Oppose the inevitable. 

And die like a fool? 



38 RHAPSODY 

What damnable folly 
To dam an ocean 

Of human souls! 
The stronger you dam it, 
The greater destruction 
Will crush and o'erwhelm thee 

As onward it rolls. 



THE BUSINESS MAN. 

His life consists of dollars and cents, 

Of bacon and beans, or his stock in trade: 

He has burdened the land with leases and rents, 

And girdled the world with a barbed wire fence. 

He has emptied his life of its soul and dream 
(His art practical, his science applied), 
And made the object of living to mean 
Just buying and selling, or working a scheme. 



A FIELD OF GRAIN. 

From the window^s of a train 
Gleamed a field of ripening grain, 
Turning golden in the sun 
For the harvest soon to come. 



RHAPSODY 39 

Thought a broker in this strain, 
As he glanced from moving train: 
"Crops look good, and price is tall; 
I will gamble on a fall." 

Spoke a merchant on this wise, 
While with calculating eyes. 
Viewed the grain; "This field, I wis. 
Means a thousand barrels of grist." 

Mused a poet on the scene. 
Far awa\' as in a dream; 
Saw he only beauty there. 
Ripening grain, and very fair. 



LIFE. 

Our life is sleep, the world a dream, 

To which there comes no wakening gleam. 

And all is night. 

But then at times we seem to be 

About to wake and almost see. 

We feel a breath around us blown 

That whispers of a sea unknown, 

And faintly hear the billows break — 

We hear, we feel, but cannot wake. 



40 RHAPSODY 

AIR CASTLES. 

Labor sweetest, 

Joy completest, 
Building castles in the skies; 

Golden flighted, 

Astral lighted — 
Some ma}' fall, but others rise. 

Domes a-gleaming, 
Angles dreaming — 

O those castles in the air! 
Fancy founded, 
Cloud enshrouded — 

All my hope — my life is there! 



PROMETHEUS VINCTUS. 

Great Jove, dread tyrant of the universe! 
Though chained b}^ thee to this infernal rock. 
And doomed to everlasting miser^^ 
I do defy thee! Thou, 'tis true, hast power 
To torture flesh, not to subdue the mind. 
My love for man, it seems, has been my woe, 
But shall this woe deter me from the right? 
Shall I repent of what my mind approves. 
And pray for mercy to abhorred Jove? 
No, never! Add to woe a thousand woes, 



RHAPSODY 41 

And multiply my pain with agony, 

I'll stand through all as firm, immovable, 

As do these mountains 'gainst the rage of time! 

Ye vultures, fiends that feed upon m^' heart, 

Though swooning in a deathless agony, 

Ye shall not see me wince, or hear me groan!— 

Unconquered, though in chains, in that I have 

A will to do, endure and not to yield. 



TO LIBERTY. 

O Liberty-, what mighty deeds 

On battleground hast thou inspired! 
How fell the servile Persian host 

When Grecian hearts by thee were fired! 
How fought thy sons in latter years, 

In other lands beyond the sea. 
When haughty Albion meet defeat, 

And lost a world through tyranny! 

O Liberty, for thee thy sons 

Brave every danger, laugh at fear. 
And love and fealty to thee 

The chain and bolt can sever ne'er! 
When Tyranny has direful power 

To bind the hand, control the breath. 
They rush into the battlefield, 

And find thee, Liberty, in death. 



42 RHAPSODY 



A SONG OF THE DESERT. 

I am lord of m_vself wherever I ride, 
I am lord of myself, and a thousand beside — 
A master, but not by the tyranny of birth, 
x\nd one of the very few freemen on earth. 

By the might of the sword, I'm a king as I ride 
Where the desert spreads treeless and trackless and 

wide; 
I am king of the desert wherever I roam; 
My sword is my sceptre, my steed is my throne. 

The law is a tyrant that cowards obey. 

And the church is the place for these cowards to pray: 

The freedom of nations I scorn and defy; 

'Tis a bait for the simple, a politic lie. 

I am king for the freedom my proud spirit craves, 
And am free b\' the power that makes other men slaves. 
Though born in a hovel, I am mighty and free. 
While the kings of the nations pay tribute to me. 



THE INDIAN. 

He lived happy and free from the bondage of grains, 
Hunting in forests, hunting on plains, 



RHAPSODY 43 

Hunting the antelope, buck, doe and fawn; 
Ikit his hunting is over, the Indian has gone — 
Gone with the bison, gone with the beaver. 
Gone from the Hving, gone and forever. 



WASTED TIME. 

"l have no time to waste in making money," 
Said Agassiz. This is the top of wisdom, 
A hidden truth known only to the wise 
In soul. Time's beyond price, for time is life. 
He onl\- lives whose soul worketh in time; 
All other life is sleep deeper than death: 
Who sells his time for gold is traitor to 
Himself, and dies a beggar in the end. 



THE HERITAGE OP^ BLOOD. 

The hist'ry of the human race 
Is writ in blood from face to face. 
From time to time, from age to age, — 
'Tis writ in blood on every page. 

Ay, from the morning of his birth, 
Man's blood has soiled the virgin earth; 
In ever}- clime, in every land. 
His blood has stained the pearly sand. 



44 RHAPSODY 

This awful heritage of blood 
That sweeps the world with storm and flood, 
It's beauty marred and life undone, 
Descendeth on from sire to son. 



TOLERATION. 

Men's minds are cast in different mould, 
And as the mind, the thoughts unfold: 
A dreary world this surely 'd be 
If men in all things should agree. 

Haste not thy brother to condemn, 
Because you can't agree as men; 
I)ut grant to him that privilege due 
That you would have him grant to 3'ou. 



EVOLUTION. 

The ages work in harmon}^, 

The living with the dead; 
And men whose bones have turned to dust 

Help grind our daily bread. 

The present, past and future are 
Links in a single chain. 



RHAPSODY 45 

That reach from what we w^ere and are, 
To what we would attain. 



IMITATION. 

Man's duty is to know himself, 
And then to be himself alone; 
For every mind, however dull, 
May claim some virtue as its own. 

Leave imitation to the ape. 

The dummy and the manikin, 

And l:»e thyself, thyself alone. 

For less than this were less than man. 



WILL. 



To moral wound and cry for aid, 
My friends were blind and deaf: 

I souj^ht throui^h all the world for God 
And found him in mvself. 



THE GOLDEN AGE. 

Weary, dissatisfied, we let 
To-day slip into yester-year. 



46 RHAPSODY 

While dreaming o'er, and sighing for, 
The good old times that never were. 

Alas, alas! it is our fate 
To learn at last, but learn too late. 
That life is now, that life is here. 
Within the present and the near. 



THE DRUNKARD. 

The drunkard drinks to slake a quenchless thirst; 

He drinks his family out of house and land. 
And still he drinks, Avith fiery torture curst — 

Drinks death, with feverish lips' and trembling hand. 

The thing that he was born for, he shall miss; 

Remorse shall dog him sober; drunk, the idiot laugh: 
Around his death-bed snakes shall curl and hiss; 

A single //' shall be his epitaph. 



THE MISER. 

His soul is dead, his heart is cold. 
His life is spent in getting gold; 
And getting's never satisfied. 
For greed can never be supplied. 

His ears are deaf to hunger's cr}', 
The poor may weep, the famished die- 



RHAPSODY 47 

He onh^ hears the clink of gold, 
And clutches with a tighter hold. 

His eyes are blind to all distress, 
To faded cheek and tattered dress — 
He only sees his glittering gold. 
And clutches with a tighter hold. 

His greed for gold grows with the years, 
Dried up the man, the ape appears; 
And when he sleeps, of gold he dreams, 
And when he awakes, with gold he schemes. 

With gold he measures man as dross. 
And love and virtue as a loss; 
He sees the world through yellow gold; 
His soul is dead, his heart is cold. 

And when this thing shall come to die, 
No man will mourn, no woman cry; 
And then begins a tale that's old, — 
To break his will and get his gold. 



ON LEAVING THE CITY 
IN THE SPRING. 

There is comfort in the city 

When the fields are dead and blown; 



48 RHAPSODY 

But I would not gaze forever 
On a pile of brick and stone. 

Smoke forever hangs above it, 
Like a portent in the sk^', 

And where'er it throws its shadow 
Trees and flowers fade and die. 

Country air is the best tonic 
For the city-weary soul, — 

Rock and river, field and forest, 
And the forces that control. 



THE SONNET. 

The sonnet is an artificial mould, 

Where spul is crushed, and form alone survives; 

'Tis a Procrustean bed where genius lies 

Mangled by barbarous art, and cold 

In death; 'tis as if folk of different mould 

Should all wear garments of a single size; 

It is a curb that genius doth despise, 

A snaffle-bit for Pegasus, to hold 

Him from the skies; 'tis like — but I will stay 

Comparison, lest some offended be: 

Remembering Keats and Milton, I'll unsay 

What I have said, — adding, 'tis not for me 



RHAPSODY 49 

To work in sonnets, though a Shakespeare may, 
With which I know my reader will agree. 



MISS MODERNA. 

She is a maiden mathematical, 

;\ prim and prosy maiden with a purse, 

Who prides herself on being practical. 
And thinks to be a man by being coarse. 

She calmly, coldl\' lives by rule and line, 
And does not love beyond her reason; an', 

Argues for woman's rights, and proves, in fine. 
The rights of woman tread on those of man. 

From long presiding over household cares, 

It seems that she has learned to rule the state; 

And when- she marries, through her own affairs. 
Will prove that woman's greater than her fate. 

She'll marry a man as weak as she is strong. 
Whom she can rule and peck through life; 

And who will slink around the worldly throng. 
Distinguished as the husband of his wife. 

Though thus to live can surely be no harm, 
Methinks that it were done but foolishl\'; 

For everybody knows the natural charm. 
Of woman is her feminimity. 



50 RHAPSODY 



A SONCx OF THE WEST. 

Ho for the life that is strenuous! 

Ho for the mart and the street! 
We will wear our lives down to a frazzle; 

We will burn our lives out at white heat. 

We have learned that in death there's no waking, 

So in life there shall be no sleep: 
We will live life out in the living, 

And in death have nothing to weep. 

Our life is no sluggish river 

That stagnates in marsh or on lea, 
But a mountain torrent that headlong 

Goes thundering down to the sea. 

Then ho for the life in the New World! 

Then ho for the life on wheels! 
That waits not, but goes rushing to meet the 

Future, with welcoming peals. 



To farm and factor}^, to carriage and car. 

We have chained the God of the Thunder Showers, 

And gone whirling beyond the dreams of the past, 
While the seconds and minutes are growing to hours. 



IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 

|iii|iii|iii|iitj|<ii|iii|iii|iii| 

All £2:reat thin.ti^s come from the mountains — reliiJ'ion 
— poetry. (Poetry- came from Mount Parnassus; the 
Hebrew religion from Mount Sinai; the Greek, from 
Mount Olympus: the Christian, from the Sermon on the 
Mount J 

In the green, sheltered valleys below life may run 
into graceful, undulating rhyme; but we must go to 
the mountains for the sublime. Mountains are like 
the blank verse of Milton, without ornament or affec- 
tation, free and barren, grand and terrible. 

Here the rivers roar into torrents and break into 
cataracts. Here the earth is uplifted, and torn by con- 
\'ulsions into a thousand ridges and chasms, against 
which the thundering clouds are hurled in storm and 
snow and sleet. 



Land of the mountain! how shall I name thee, 
When for what thou art not the many defame thee! 
AH wrinkled and broken and twisted in pain. 
With thv winters of snow and thv summers of rain. 



52 RHAPSODY 

Land of the mountain! how dearh' I love thee, 

With the white snow upon thee and the blue sky above 

thee! 
And my wish is to live here and die here forever, 
In thy vastness, loneliness, g'randeur and terror! 



Land of the hills and a thousand streams, 
Of silver and gold and palpable dreams! 
Where the slender aspen stands and quivers 
On the stonv banks of the thundering rivers. 



Here man must live with all his might 
To live at all: the western wight 
Has coined himself in one word, ntstlc. 
The rock's resistance nerves his muscle, 
It fires his blood and clears his brain; 
And looking on the world below, 
While soul is thrilled and all aglow • 
With music wild from torrents whirled, 
His thoughts expand and fill the world. 



Here life is harsh and crude and stron 
But free from memory of wrong. 
The West is young, its blood is pure. 
Its history is all before. 



te> 



RHAPSODY 53 



THE PROSPECTOR. 

With heavy feet, he travels far 

On trackless journeys lone, 
Seeking the treasure of the hills. 

Fast-locked in vaults of stone. 

We spend our daily life for daily ends, 

By the horizon bound, 
While he goes forth to seek his dreams 

In a wide world, and round. 



THE COLUMBINE. 

She lives in lonely, high mountain glens, 
Aerial, lucid, unpampered by men, 

Oueen flower of the mountains, the columbine; 
And breathes the delicate air of summer, 

Cooled by the snow-caps, fragrant with \>\VLe. 

She has stood on the banks, and heard in a dream, 
Through countless summers, the rush of the stream 

O'er rocks that protrude and confine. 
Till the soul of the rock and the river 

Blooms in the columbine. 



54 RHAPSODY 



ON THE MOUNTAIN. 

My friend lives in a lone, log" cabin, 
Far up the tailing' mountain stream; 

And where the spacious river valley- 
Has narrowed into a ravine. 

He loves to feel the sense of freedom 

The unmolested wildness gives: 
He loves to breathe the breath of heaven, 

And quaff the nectar of the hills. 

He took me to the top of mountains 

All bathed in light and swathed in shrouds; 

We went into the azure heaven, 

And left the world beneath the clouds. 

We left the pine trees dwarfed and stunted, — 
Saw greenest fields of grass that grow% 

And little vivid, vermeil blossoms 

That nod their heads against the snow. 

Then climbed beyond to barren grandeur, 
And viewed a w^orld wind-swept and free. 

Streams flowing from eternal snow-banks. 
The far-off fountains of the sea. 



RHAPSODY 55 

But when the mountain broke abruptly, 

We stopped and shuddered — backward fell; 

And in those hi^h, ethereal heavens 
We clung^, and peeied down into hell. 

We felt the mountain's Sinai secret 

Throuj;»'h all our beinj^s bound and throb: 

We stood with Moses on the mountain, 
xAnd looked upon the face of God. 



WRITTEN IN A DESERTED 
MINING CAMP. 

Here once the rin^'in^ sound of steel. 
The thunder blast, the whirl of wheel. 
Awoke an echo in the hills 
That sounded louder than its rills: 
ISut that is past — ^one like a dream, 
And silent all save bird and stream: 
No more the noise of eager men 
Disturbs the quit of the glen. 

On ever> hill and mountain side 
The fondest hopes have lived and died. 
A w^atery shaft deep in the ground, 
With broken rock piled high around. 
Doth mark the toil that Hope once gave. 
And also marks that Hope's sad grave. 



56 RHAPSODY 

This building was a live saloon, 
A brothel and a gambling room, 
Where men drank deep, played wild and lost- 
Acted the fool at bitter cost; 
But all are gone and scattered far — 
A squirrel is sitting on the bar. 

The town's as silent as the grave, 
And grass is growing on the pave. 
The houses are deserted all, 
Save for the rat within the wall; 
> Like grinning skeletons they stand 
(The boards are warped and weather-tanned); 
And when the world is lost to light, 
And clouds and rain usurp the night. 
Through broken windows, open doors. 
The wind, it whistles and it roars. 



SPRING IN THE MOUNTAINS. 

The sun is coming North again 
To bring the summer back: 

A smiling, verdant, flowery train 
Is dancing in her track. 

The snow that all the winter long 
Has lain upon the hills, 



RHAPSODY 57 

Now disappears with gurgling song 
In numerous little rills. 

The magpie chatters loud and long, 

A sort of Runic lay: 
The bluebird flies the pines among, 

And carols all the da}'. 

The chipmunk full of lightsome glee, 

With almost lightning speed, 
Now dartles down a fallen tree, 

Or nibbles at a weed. 

His outfit the prospector binds 

Upon his patient jack, 
To seek the gold he never finds. 

In mountains farther back. 



DENVER. 

Denver has her royal seat 

Where the plain and mountains meet 

In the Halls of Even; 
At the top of earthly cares, 
And the foot of golden stairs 

Leading up to heaven. 



58 RHAPSODY 

'THOU SOVEREIGN PEAK OF THE 
MOUNTAINS." 

Thou sovereign peak of the mountains, 

Towering'up in the sk}-, 
In calm sublimity standing 

While the storms of the ages roll h\\ — 

O had I but thy endurance 

While I stand in the world alone, 

No complaint should ever escape me, 
But alas! my heart is not stone. 



PART II. 

CONCENTRATES. 

|iii|iii|iii|iii||iii|iii|iii|iii| 

There are only two things in life worth while — love 
and libert3\ 

All the world's beauty is born of its love. 

Hope is the lance of daring 3^outh, 
A staff the old man leans upon. 

Knowledge is our greatest enemy — it drove us from 
Eden and keeps us" from Heaven. 

Good and evil are male and female, and their pro- 
duct is the sum of the universe. 

"Know thyself," says the old adage; but man will 
never know himself until he can see humanity outside 
the human. 

Religion is the poetry of the vulgar — doggerel. Po- 
etry is the religion of the cultivated few — of the artist- 
ic soul, 



^1 



6o RHAPSODY 



I can't belive the God that made the lily and the rose 
will damn his children to eternal fire. 

Sorrow is universal, eternal and infinite. What best 
distinguishes man from the brute creation is his great- 
er capacity for suffering. Sorrow is the sympathetic 
nerve of humanity. 

Pain is the mother of the senses. 

Everybody is a fool to somebody. 

It is well for woman to be able to help herself, but 
bad for her to have to help herself. 

When a good woman cannot save a man. 
No power on earth, in hell or heaven, can. 

A man marries his love: a woman marries her lover. 

A woman in politics is like a man in petticoats — lost. 

In a well regulated government, the radical evolves 
the law and the conservative applies it. 

Civilization did not come from following precedents, 
but by breaking them. 

The philosophers and reformers have lived in vain. 



RHAPSODY 6i 

Man cannot be helped against his will. As long as life 
is life, and man is man, so long will there be misery 
and oppression. Why then weep foolish tears and 
build impossible Utopias, when evil is a necessity' and 
perfection an absurdity? 

Put an angel on the earth, and he would starve to 
death; turn the devil loose, and he would live on the 
fat of the land. 

Work that is not its own inspiration and recompense 
is mere drudgery, and drudgery is — damnation. 

Wealth means liberty: servitude is slaver3\ There 
can be no libert}^ without equalit}^; there can be no 
freedom without independence. 

If Labor were as wise as he is powerful, he would 
rule the world. He is a sleeping giant. He is another 
Sampson, blind and bound, and grinding corn for the 
Philistines; but woe to the Philistines in that day when 
he shall awaken to the knowledge of his strength! A 
giant is a dangerous servant. 

The boss is the lash of the capitalist made from the 
laborer's own hide. 

The standard of labor is the mule, and the nearer a 
man attains to this standard, both in brain and brav/n, 
the better laborer he makes. 



62 RHAPSODY 

Men are divided into two classes, fools and rascals: 
the fools do the work and the rascals do the rest. 

When a man steals enough to become respectable, 
all the world cringes at his feet in jealous admiration. 

An ideal that can be realized is no ideal. 

We make our own temptations: drink is no tempta- 
tion to the man that never drank. 

Most good people are merely good because they do 
nothing bad. 

Contentment is a happiness 
Known only to the dunce. 

Reason is conscious instinct. 

Blood cannot be washed out with blood. 

There was never a hungry optimist. 

The greatest things in life are done without trying. 

The creation of man is the greatest failure on record. 

Many authors write whole books to express a thought 
that could be put into a single sentence. They can- 



RHAPSODY 63 

not concentrate thought till it scintillates like the dia- 
mond, but spill themselves in quartos and folios, as 
weak as water, as thin as air. 



THE SUPERNATURAL. 

y\ belief in the supernatural presupposes a nature 
outside of Nature, — that Nature is not creative and 
sufficient unto itself, but inert, mechanical, dead, and 
impossible without an outside and greater nature. 

Man lives too near God to recognize and reverence 
Him, and so runs after false gods. 

Earth is merely earth to those that live upon it: ten 
thousand miles aAvav it is a brilliant star. 



WALT WHITMAN. 
I. 

If you want to know what Adam was like, read Walt 
Whitman. Here is the first man God ever made, the 
primal man, Adam, before saddened with the knowledge 
of good and evil, fresh and glowing from the hand of 
God, and drunk with the glory of the morning of cre- 
ation, shouting and dancing in physical ecstasy. 

Here is the epithalamium that Adam sung at his 
nuptials in the Garden of Eden. 

It is all prose poetry: poetic prose came after the fall. 



64 RHAPSODY 

He was born before clothes were made, and he never 
learned how to wear them. 

II. 

He embodies the spirit of Democracy — not religion, 
but religions; not man, but men. 

He not only speaks for Liberty, but unshackled from 
rhj^me and meter, he speaks the language of Liberty. 

He is no singer of bric-a-brac and broken china, but 
a serious soul dealing in eternals and ultimates. 



RACE SUICIDE. 

The birth rate of a people is in inverse ratio to their 
intelligence. 

The more man thinks, the less he breeds: the higher 
the organism, the greater the suffering. 

Man finds himself suddenh' awakened from a world- 
long sleep to a consciousness of his miserable and ir- 
remediable fate, and with a blind impulse to endure 
other matter with like consciousness; but as his con- 
sciousness becomes more conscious, and his suffering 
more acute, the less his inclination to perpetuate him- 
self, by becoming a link in an endless chain of human 
misery. Thus man is ever advancing toward Nirvana, 
the ultimate triumph of intellect over instinct. 

Man sleeps and dreams on the edge of a frightful 
precipice, and to awake is death. 



THE AWAKENING. 

|iii|iiiiiii|iiijliii|iii|iii|iii| 

In the half-awakened dawn, through the glamour of 
youth, the earth lay before me as a vast pleasure- 
ground, full of wonder and magic, and life seemed a 
succession of holidays. And Love in the form of a 
beautiful woman, smiled on me in the streets and beck- 
oned to me from the vine-covered casements. 

But it came to pass that the Spirit of Evil appeared 
unto me, and touching me lightly on the eyelids, said, 
"Awake! and behold thy dreams." And lo! the earth 
was changed to a monstrous arena, filled with all man- 
ner of life, fighting, killing and devouring one another 
in a blind struggle for existence. 

And the Spirit continued: "Thou dreamest of love: 
come, and I will show thee thy posterity." And we 
went down narrow, ill-smelling streets, crowded with 
children — the children of the poor — springing up in 
filth and want to crime and shame: and pointing he 
said, "This, and this, and this, is thy child." Then 
we came to a prostitute, and he said, ' Behold th}^ 
daughter with her mother's eyes!' Strange men come 
to her through the dark alleys of the night, and leave 
her at dawn wan and wasted, and burnt through as 
with flame." He took me to hospitals, insane as}^- 



66 RHAPSODY 

lums, jails and penitentiaries: and he found my child- 
ren there also — the diseased, the maniac and the crim- 
inal. 

And weeping, I said, "Sureh% the}^ are not all here; 
surely, there are many that are healthy, prosperous 
and happ3\" 

He answered: "They are not all here — they fill all 
the avenues of life; they are not all here, but they are 
all — miserable. But admitting that some are happ}', 
can pleasure balance pain? How man^- lives of the 
fortunateh^ happy can compensate for one life of suf- 
fering? How many Websters does it take to balance 
an imbecile or an impotent? Sorrow is dead-heav}', 
and outweighs a thousand pleasures." 

After a long silence of tears, I ventured: "But after 
all, is not life more than pain and pleasure? Is not 
'man greater than his fate,' as shadowed forth in his 
religion?" 

The Spirit answered: "The saddest thing about 
man is his religion — a hope born of despair, the fev- 
erish dream of the sorrow-stricken and heart-broken, 
the childish babble of the defeated will." 

"This may be true of Christianity and kindred re- 
ligions," I said, "for Christianity^ is the apotheosis of 
the ego, the religion of the individual; but is not the 
growing conception of the fundamental law of Nature, 
evolution, about to replace it with a greater, grander, 
broader religion — the religion of humanity; when, know- 



RHAPSODY 67 

ing the immortalit^v of tJic soul, we shall no longer be 
concerned about the immortality of my soul or tliy 
soul? Shall we not be purified and made new through 
renunciation and complete surrender to the All, which 
is God? As man has come up from the brute, shall 
he not continue to ascend — go on to God? Can we 
not build through evolution a ladder that shall reach 
from earth to heaven?" 

The Spirit answered: "God is in first as in last, in 
least as in greatest, and heaven is here as there. Earth 
may take different shapes, and pass through various 
stages, but earth can never be other than earth." 

And he pointed, and said, "Behold evolution!" And 
I saw a ladder that reached from the lowest valley to 
the highest summit, but no higher, and man slowly 
and painfully climbing upward through countless ages, 
only to tumble headlong down in the end. 

And in anguish of soul, I cried, "Sisyphus! Sisy- 
phus!" 

And the Spirit echoed, "Sisyphus, ay, ay, Sisyphus. 
The old world myth of the punishment of Sisyphus 
is a perfect allegory of the fate of mankind. 

'With many a weary step and many a groan, 
Up a high hill he heaves a huge round stone; 
The huge round stone resulting with a bound, 
Thunders impetuous down and smokes along the ground.'" 

"I have yet one escape," I cried: "l will go and 
drown mvself in death." 



68 RHAPSODY 

And still the Spirit answered: "There is no death, 
as you yourself onl}^ just now maintained. What men 
call death is merely change; for buried, you will crawl 
in the worm and grow in the grass, and thus tedioush^ 
and painfully begin all over again, as you have un- 
doubtedh^ done a thousand times before." 

Alas, that we cannot die! Alas and alas! and for- 
ever and ever, alas! 



^Zounds, sir, yoii^rc robbed; for shame, put on your gown; 

Your heart is burst, you have lost Jialf your soul; 

Even noiu, now, very now, and old black ram 

Is tupping your white ewe. Arise, arise.' 

Awake the snorting citizens with the bell. 

Or else the devil will make a grands ire of you : 

Arise! I say. — Othello. 



ADVANCE SHEETS FROM AN 
UNITED STATES HISTOR- 
ICAL WORK, 
A. D. 2900. 

About the last of August [1619I came in a Dutch man-of-war that 
sold us 20 Negars. — J\ecords of Virginia Colony. 

How little the agents in this transaction knew, or 
the clerk that recorded it, that it marked the beginning 
of a new^ era in the world's history! that it would 
eventuall}' stand in the same relation to America that 
the invasion of the Normans under William the Con- 
queror does to England! How little the}^ knew that 
in the name of slave they were buying wives and hus- 
bands for their sons and daughters! Yet such was the 
case. It is here that the black man first enters upon 
the historical stage, and begins to play his part in the 
drama of civilization. 



It was generally believed in the nineteenth century 
that the Civil War had settled the Negro problem, and 
it was not until the middle of the next century that it 



RHAPSODY 71 

was first realized that it had not begun to be settled. 
It entered politics, and for centuries was almost the 
sole issue, and party after party tried its solution in 
vain. It seems almost incredible, that, with the his- 
tory of previous and neighboring nations under sim- 
ilar conditions accessible to all, no one seemed to be 
aware that no race problem was ever settled except by 
the extinction of a race or the races. 



The public schools of the North were probably one 
of the greatest factors in the amalgamation of the 
races. We give the following adaptation of Pope's 
famous lines, which were often quoted at one time by 
the Lily Whites in support of their contention that the 
rearing of black and white children in the school room 
on terms of equality would inevitably bring them into 
closer relations: 

"The Negro is a monster of such frightful mien, 
That to be hated, needs but to be seen; 
But seen too oft, familiar with the face, 
We first endure, then pity, then embrace." 

But the greatest factor was the Negro himself, for 
he quickly adapted himself to his place in civilization, 
and in working out his industrial redemption also work- 
ed out his social redemption. 



72 RHAPSODY 

The equal laws and friendh^ attitude of the North 
and West were a great attraction to the Southern Negro, 
and a steady immigration set in about the twentieth 
century, and soon reached enormous proportions. The 
Negro's place in the South was taken by the European 
immigrant, who now turned from the North and West 
to the South; and thus the mixing process became equal- 
ized. 

Philadelphia being the most Southern of the North- 
ern cities, became the Mecca of the Negro. Away back 
at the beginning of the twentieth century, whenever a 
Negro found a white sweetheart in the adjoining 
Southern states, he took her to Philadelphia, where 
they could be lawfully married and live in peace and 
securit3\ The mixed races clung together, and by the 
following century inhabited a large section of the city. 
At length, this condition of affairs created great alarm, 
and the marriage laws w^ere repealed, only to be re-in- 
stated at a later period. 



The Whites looked down upon the Blacks as their 
inferiors, and the Blacks looked up to the Whites as 
their superiors; and so it happened, that when a Negro 
man took a white woman to himself, he made her his 
wife, but when a White man took a Negro woman, he 
made her his mistress. With the Negro it was ahvays 



RHAPSODY 



/3 



Barkis' willin' "; indeed, he was not only willin^o:, but 
eager, to mix. 

This idea of the superiority of the White race still 
lingers after the amalgamation of the races, and shows 
itself in the way in which we seek to ignore our Negro 
ancestry. When the European press onl}^ latel}^ indi- 
cated the Negro in our blood by the bar sinister across 
our shield, did we not secretly writhe within, and cry 
out, "We are more white than black," till all Europe 
rang with its laughter? 

The Negro has disappeared, but the word is still 
used as a term of reproach. 

^ ^= >^ ^ 

For a thorough understanding of the Negro charac- 
ter before it had begun to merge into the White, we 
refer the student to that formative period of American 
literature commonly known as the Coon Literature Per- 
iod, or the Coon Age, which begun soon after the 
Emancipation, and grew into great magnitude in the 
following century. 

Coon literature properly begins with Joel Chandler 
Harris and Frank L. Stanton. Although Frank L. 
Stanton was not a Negro,* he seems to have been thor- 
oughly imbued with the Negro sentiment, and has giv- 
en us a sympathetic interpretation of the Negro char- 

* Authorities differ about this, See Curiosities of Ainerican 
Literature, 



74 RHAPSODY 

acter in his poems, most of which are jubilee songs, 
with a hallelujah chorus, to be played on a banjo. 
Thus it wil] be seen that the predominating- trait of 
the Negro was his unfailing cheerfulness. Indeed, it 
may be said of him as Logan sung of the Cuckoo: 

"There was no sorrow in this song, 
Nor winter in his year." 



The race prejudice of the white man was originalh^ 
so strong that if, at the close of the Civil War, he 
could have foreseen how his descendants would settle 
the race problem he was about to bequeath them, he 
would undoubtedh'' have settled it himself, then and 
there, b^^ dispatching the Negro back to Africa. But 
this question of deporting the Negro was never seri- 
ously considered until he had entered the skilled trades 
in competition with White labor, which caused much 
bitterness and some bloodshed; but it was then too late 
— the Mulatto population alone then numbered nearly 
12,000,000. 

Man never provides for the future; he never grap- 
ples with an evil until it has him in its toils. 



We have been the subject of much criticism by Eu- 
ropeans, who claim that we have deterioated, — that 
we are no longer a progressive and inventive people. 



RHAPSODY 75 

But the unprejudiced observer must admit that this 
criticism is unfair and premature. After the union of 
two such-wideh' diverging types of the human family, 
it is only natural to expect a period of hesitation and 
inactivity. We must be given time to form character 
and to find ourselves. 

And further, it can be said that if we have lost in 
some ways, we have undoubtedly gained in others. 
No one can deny, for instance, that we have gained in 
spiritual religion. The simple child-like faith of the 
black man has settled the rising doubts of the w^hite, 
and America is still a Christian country, while all Eu- 
rope has long since bowed down to the false gods of 
modern science. 



In looking backward from the vantage-ground of 
time, we can see that the so-called Negro problem was 
purely racial, — as much white as black, — and so long- 
as the two races lived together could only be settled 
by miscegenation. But the dominant Whites persist- 
ed to the end in treating it as economical; and so drove 
it forward to a conclusion like the man did the mule — 
by pulling it back by the tail. The world moves by 
indirection. W'e live, by doing something else. 



With the reserved, morose temperament of the Ger- 



76 RHAPSODY 

manic strain has been happily blended the impulsive, 
cheerful temperament of the Negro; the sharp Anglo- 
Saxon face has been softened by the fiat, mobile fea- 
tures of the African; and to the cold-paleness and som- 
ber sadness of the North has been added the warm 
tints, the abandon and luxuriance of the tropic. 

The union of these two races has given us the most 
beautiful women in the world, with rich, wavy hair, 
and cheeks like russet apples tinged with red. 

"What God hath joined together, let not man put 
asunder;" and no man can. 



When you behold the last of me 
Go b}' in pall and bier, 

Go write the one word Misery, 
Then blot it with a tear. 



V!AR 



1906 



•-iOKHKY OF CONGRF<; 

MH 



